17 March 2018 – Manila, Philippines: Philippine Azkals Team Manager Dan Palami calls for support for the upcoming matches of the national team, taking place on March 22 and March 27, 2018, to be held at the Rizal Memorial Stadium.

The Azkals will see action on March 22 against Fiji, for an International Friendly Match, which will serve as a tune-up game for the crucial AFC Asian Cup 2019 qualifier match on March 27, 2018.

Azkals Team Manager Dan Palami says, “This is an important match for the country, and the cards are not exactly stacked against us. We are currently on top of the table of Group F with 9 points. We win or we draw, we will move forward and the country will be part of the AFC Asian Cup for the first time.”

Palami continues, “We want the ‘12th man’ to be there in both the tune-up game and the Asian Cup qualifier match. This sport deserves all the support it can get, as we have already gone far, since 2010, when I took over as Team Manager of Azkals.”

“We should also be proud of our national team players who are doing well internationally in their various clubs. Such as Neil Etheridge, currently with Cardiff City, and all other previous PFL club players, who are doing well and are now playing for neighbouring Asian countries, such as Ian Ramsay, who is currently with Felda United and Misagh Bahadoran, who is with Perak FA…And maybe this is the only way that the country or the youth can see, that aspiring for an international football career is not that impossible”, says Palami.

Tajikistan is currently ranked 124th, while the Philippines is currently ranked 122nd, in its latest rankings by FIFA, while Fiji is currently ranked 168th.

Tickets for both the Azkals vs. Fiji match, and the Azkals vs. Tajikistan match are available at www.smtickets.com.

It was the fourth time that I have witnessed on television a gruesome player injury on a basketball floor, the most recent of which was what happened to All-Star forward Gordon Hayward yesterday during his Boston debut (following seven seasons with the Utah Jazz) and in the opening game of the National Basketball Association?s 2017-18 season between the Celtics and the Cleveland Cavaliers at the Quicken Loans Arena.

Before the game, the narrative was how Cleveland fans would react to ex-Cavs guard Kyrie Irving?s first appearance in a Celtics uniform (he was booed early) and LeBron James? questionable status due to a left ankle sprain he suffered in training camp before the 32-year-old The King eventually suited up for Cleveland and thus extended his streak for most consecutive opening-game appearances without a miss at 15 seasons.
In the end, though, the major story was not even about the Cavs? 102-99 victory over the Celtics but prayers being offered by Hayward?s NBA peers and hoop fans worldwide for his speedy recovery from a horrific left ankle fracture he suffered with 6:45 left in the first quarter.

This was a real ankle-breaker as the 27-year-old Hayward was going up for an alley-oop pass but fell awkwardly on his leg going down.

Visually, Hayward?s ankle-turning injury was so horrifying, comparable to those previous serious injuries sustained by Fil-foreigner Eugene Tejada (fractured his spine causing paralysis) in the local professional league a decade or so ago, University of Louisville guard Kevin Douglas Ware Jr. in a U.S. NCAA tournament game in 2013 and, a year later, by then-Indiana Pacer Paul George in an all-NBA intra-squad scrimmage among Team USA prospects for the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup.

Ware, a 6-2 guard, was a 20-year-old sophomore at Louisville at the time. He suffered an open fracture of the tibia to his right leg during the first half of the Cardinals? third-round (Elite Eight) match against the Duke Blue Devils in the 2013 NCAA tournament.

Ware landed awkwardly after attempting to block a three-point shot by Duke guard Tyler Thornton and suffered an open fracture to his right leg that protruded several inches out of his shin.

When the Cardinals won the NCAA tournament that year, Ware was asked by teammates to cut the championship nets.

Ware eventually appeared in nine games with Louisville during the 2013-14 season before being granted ?redshirt? status for him to fully recover from his injury.

Ware was to transfer to Georgia State University in April 2014 and spent two seasons with the Panthers where he was the Sun Belt Conference? Most Valuable Player in 2015.

While Ware was not taken in the 2016 NBA draft, the 24-year-old New York native has found roundball employment in the Greek league since the time.

George, an NBA player since 2010-11, was an Indiana Pacer when he tried out for the Team USA to the FIBA World Cup in the summer of 2014. During a nationally-televised intra-squad scrimmage at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas on August 1, 2014, the 6-8 wingman went down with a compound fracture of both bones in his lower right leg after he landed awkwardly at the base of a basket stanchion while fouling James Harden.

George eventually returned to the Pacers in the final six games of the 2014-15 NBA campaign, earned a spot on the gold medal-winning U.S. team to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and, in July this year, he was shipped to the Oklahoma City Thunder with a year remaining on his contract after spending his first seven seasons in the pro league at Indiana.

Tejada, Ware, George and Hayward: Their injuries were so gruesome and graphically disturbing that you can?t seem to forget about them.

With the influx of Koreans matriculating in various schools in the Metro Manila area during the last decade or so, it?s no small wonder that the more athletic ones have also taken up the national pastime of Filipinos that is basketball.

It did not take long for Korean Youth Basketball to flourish with the establishment of the Lee Sang Myeon Basketball Club. The youth-based club is named the first player of Korean descent to suit in the local National Collegiate Athletic Association during his stint with the University of Perpetual Help System Dalta Altas during the 2000s.

One of the products of the Lee Sang Myeon Basketball Club is 13-year-old Korean Lim Geon Woo of Montessori De San Juan.

?I started playing basketball when I was eight years old,? said Lim, an athletic 5-7, 154-pound forward. ?A lot of my critics discouraged me from playing basketball since I was small and skinny at the time. But I persisted and persevered as my ambition is become the second Korean to play in the National Basketball Association (after 7-foot-3 Ha Seung-jin, who saw action in 46 games with the Portland Blazers from 2004-06).?

?I have worked hard on my game the last few years even as I grew taller and heavier and my skills further enhanced,? added Lim, who was born in Busan to parents Jung Young Mi and Lim Jong Dae.

Lim?s game has expanded under the tutelage of coach Lee, who took him to his club five years ago.

With the LSM Basketball Club, which caters to Korean-born students in the Philippines with ages 12 to 15, Lim once chalked up 68 points in a game and earned a number of individual awards along the way. He earned Most Valuable Player and Mythical Five honors in one tournament for his offensive wizardry.

In an inter-San Juan competition, he knocked in 35 points for his school Montessori de San Juan.

For a high-scoring marksman like him, it?s ironic that Lim finds more gratification in playing defense. ?It takes a disciplined effort to play defense as defense never rests,? said Lim, ?I have had several games when I could not shoot well but I compensated it with good defense.?

Lim expectedly is enamored with several prominent players from the professional ranks. Among them are Jayson Castro from TNT, compatriot Lee Sung Jun and Rajon Rondo (New Orleans Pelicans) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (Milwaukee Bucks) in the NBA.

?I like the ?Greek Freak? Antetokounmpo because he?s all-around player,? declared Lim, noting that the Bucks forward became the fifth player in NBA history to lead his team in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocked shots in the same season during the 2016-17 campaign.

Lim and the LSMBC team are scheduled to play a series of games in Taiwan this month.

Modern-day basketball, at least in the sport?s flagship league National Basketball Association, is slowly devaluing the importance of the big men in the middle - the traditional dinosaurs that were the alpha dogs of their teams during the halcyon days of George Mikan, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Nate Thurmond Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O?Neal and even David Robinson ? and turning to a small-ball realignment that has been magnified by the success the Golden State Warriors, who romped away with the NBA crown for a second time in three years during the 2017 playoffs.

In recent times, much emphasis has been placed on ball movement and teams have relied on the motion offense to ignite their shooting strategies.

In the NBA, the triangle offense appears to be on the way out as its success is becoming a myth without a team with the right player personnel to implement.

Phil Jackson, who while employing the triangle won a league-leading 11 championships in the 1990s and 2000s as the top bench tactician of the Chicago Bulls (six) and Los Angeles Lakers (five), imposed the offensive strategy on the woebegone New York Knicks team during his three-year stint as (2014-17) as the club?s president with disastrous results as the Gotham City outfit posted a combined 80-166 record (17-65/32-50/31-51) under Derek Fisher (1.5 seasons), Kurt Rambis (.5) and current head mentor Jeff Hornacek (2016-17).

What exactly is the triangle offense? Known also as the triple post or sideline triangle, the triangle offense is an offensive strategy in basketball.
Its basic concepts actually were formulated more than seven decades ago by former college coach Sam Barry at the University of Southern California.

Barry introduced the triangle offense where players stand in triangular positions on either side of the basketball court to create good spacing between players and allow each one to pass to four teammates.

Barry?s initial setup employed the simple triangulation setup of the center, who stands at the low post; a forward, who is at the wing; and a guard, who is at the corner, on one side of the court.

At the other side of this five-player system are the off guard, who stands up at the top of the key, and the ?weaker? forward, who is on the weak-side high post.

Barry, who was enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978, ran his version of the triangle with a stocky guard named Morice Fredrick (Tex) Winter.

When Winter became the head coach at Kansas State University in 1953, he brought Barry?s TO and even made it more complicated with different strategies involving various advantageous moves.

Winter subsequently immortalized the triangle offense by writing the book ?Triple-Post Offense? in 1962 while at KSU.

Winter hooked up with the Houston Rockets in the NBA in 1971-72 as their head coach. But after only one and a half seasons at the Rockets helm, he returned to the collegiate coaching ranks.

Winter did not go back into the NBA until 1985 when he served as an assistant to head coaches Stan Albeck and Doug Collins while with the Chicago Bulls. Through the following years, Winter continued to make refinements on the triangle offense. When Phil Jackson took over the Bulls? head mentoring reins in 1989, he not only installed the offensive strategy full time but also gave it much prominence.

Jackson hired Winter as one of his assistant coaches during his nine-year stay (1989-9 in Windy City and when the Zen Master joined the Los Angeles Lakers organization in 1999, he also brought along Winter as an assistant. In the next five seasons, the Lakers advanced to the NBA Finals on four occasions and earned three titles along the way behind Shaq and Kobe Bryant.

Following a one-year sabbatical (2004-05), Jackson returned to the Lakers in 2005-06 and he again sought the services of Winter. The Lakers returned to prominence with back-to-back championships in 2009 and 2010 behind Bryant and big man Pau Gasol.

Jackson?s offensive philosophy undoubtedly was greatly influenced by his long association with Winter.

The 95-year-old Winter was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2011 under the ?contributor? category.

Height is might in basketball, a game best served to tall men and women.

Since Canadian physical education instructor Dr. James Naismith invented the game in mid-December 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts to keep young students in good physical shape during the cold months (winter) in the United States, international basketball has been dominated by athletes standing 6 feet and four inches on the average and as tall as 7-7.

A survey conducted on all of the 449 players listed on the opening-day rosters of the 30 member teams in the National Basketball Association during its 2016-17 season showed an average height of 6-7 and an average weight of 221.4 pounds.

The average NBA guy: Klay Thompson of the NBA champion Golden State Warriors who was listed at 6-7 and 215 pounds.

In the NBA?s 71-year history (the 72nd renewal will unwrap on October 17, or eight days earlier than a year ago), the tallest player ever was Romania?s 7-7 Gheorghe Muresan (1993-97 Washington Bullets/1998-2000 New Jersey Nets).

Next was the late Manute Bol (1985-88 Washington Bullets/1988-90 Golden State Warriors/1990-93 Philadelphia 76ers/1994 Miami Heat). A native of Sudan, Bol was officially measured and listed at 7-6.75 tall by the Guinness Book of World Records.

At 7-6 were Shawn Bradley (1993-95 Philadelphia 76ers/1995-97 New Jersey Nets/Dallas 1997-2005 Dallas Mavericks), who was born to American parents in the former West Germany; Chinese icon Yao Ming (2002-11 Houston Rockets), the tallest player ever to suit up in an NBA All-Star Game and the tallest player ever to be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

At 7-5 were Sim Bhullar (April 2015 Sacramento Kings), a Canadian who was born in Toronto, Ontario and is the first NBA player of Indian descent); Chuck Nevitt (1982-1983, 1988-90 Houston Rockets/1984-85 Los Angeles Lakers/1985-88 Detroit Pistons/1991 Chicago Bulls/1993 San Antonio Spurs); Russian Pavel Podkolzin (2004-06 Dallas Mavericks); and Montenegrin Slavko Vranes (January 2004 Portland; he is said to have grown to 7-6 after his one-game NBA stint).

It?s a tall story all right but like a 1977 song from American musician-composer Randy Newman, ?Short People? also have their day in the sun, even in the basketball scene.

You can be six feet tall and yet be considered a ?small? player in a sport lorded over by hefty giants.

Undersized Hoopsters like us do not stand a chance against a Gregory Slaughter, a 7-foot American-Filipino born in Cleveland, Ohio who played collegiately at the University of the Visayas in Cebu (the hometown of his mother) and later with the Ateneo de Manila University, or a June Mar Fajardo, a 6-11 mastodon from Cebu who is the best player in the local professional league today.

Then again, there have been local or international competitions in the past for players below six feet.

Among them was this international basketball tournament half-a-century ago where there was a leveled playing field.

In 1967, the first Intercontinental basketball tournament was staged in Barcelona, Spain for players 5-11 or under.

The Philippines finished third behind world powerhouse United States and host Spain.